


for you, darling? (anything)

by ftera



Category: DCU, Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 08:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7883518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftera/pseuds/ftera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the case of Jason Todd, he was never supposed to die.</p><p>(In his first life, he is the final blow, the violence that the world sees but is too afraid to speak about.</p><p>In his second, Roy takes the hit.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	for you, darling? (anything)

**Author's Note:**

> this is like,,,,,,, supposed to be symbolic or something I honestly don't know anymore I'll be happy if I never look at this ever again b ye
> 
> also I'm not sure if this should be counted as major character death because it's reincarnation so I didn't tag it but???? idk

In the case of Jason Todd, he was never supposed to die.

(In his first life, he is the final blow, the violence that the world sees but is too afraid to speak about.

In his second, Roy takes the hit.)

 

 

 

* * * 

 

This is what they have— an understanding, brief but sturdy, about their place. Roy will not mention the _befores_ and Jason avoids the _afters_.

The universe never stays the same. Sometimes, most times, it’ll be so close together in likeliness that the difference is hardly worth mentioning, but no scenario ever shows up twice. A lot of them they are paired up in groups, fighting crime together. Jason has noticed that this is a common theme, the costumes and the weapons and the training.

The reality is never the same, but the people are.

(Jason falls in love with Roy every time. Not that he counts. Not that he dares to pay attention.)

The first time Jason and Roy fight off evil on their own but still together, they fight and bleed and suffer until, in the middle of a mission, Roy takes a bullet wound and there’s no way to save him. Jason will not remember this one much beyond _red red red_ and it becomes the first promise to make, to keep Roy safe.

Roy reaches out for him and Jason is so weak, so desperate to make things right again, that when Roy asks him to stay by his side, Jason just nods and pulls him closer.

It isn’t because Jason loves him that he takes on this new mission.

(He _does_ love him, of course. This is how the story goes, how it’s always meant to be. They touch each other with ashes on their fingers and forget to worry if they ash is their own skin disintegrating or if it’s another victim. They reach for each other and sometimes their fingers are bloody and sometimes their mouths taste like nicotine or cheap alcohol. It isn’t pretty and it’s certainly never perfect, but it’s all they were given so they take it and run.

It isn’t because Jason loves him, because that would always be part of the story. It’s inevitable, a fact a statement.)

Jason saves Roy to save himself.

 

 

 

* * *

 

There’s no explanation for it. One day Jason died and the next thing he knew he was somewhere else entirely, and the people he knew before treated him as if they’d never seen him before, and for whatever reason his feet brought him to a home that he knew was _his_ , except it looked normal and Jason had never seen it before. He’d walked inside and his mother called out, telling him dinner was almost ready, so he ate dinner and went to bed and woke up in the morning and went to school as if he’d been doing it every day for the past ten years.

It’s just what it was.

Jason would go from one life to the next with almost no pause and he could blend into it as if he’d been aware and present the whole time. If anyone noticed he was different they didn’t say anything.

And then Jason would find Roy, and everything seemed to burst in bright colors.

It doesn’t matter where they are or what their lives lead them to, their meeting is unavoidable, a single bright point he can count on even when he doesn’t have the Wayne Manor and his adoptive siblings and his Robin costume.

(Sometimes, usually when their lives are something close to _normal_ , Jason will stop and look at Roy and almost has the urge to ask him if he remembers any of these lives. He’ll suspect things sometimes, like when Jason says something that was relevant to their past lives and Roy will get a fond smile on his face, or when Jason uses a nickname that he hasn’t for a while. He almost asks but something stops him, and he wonders if it’s because he already knows or if it’s because he want to keep the mystery alive.)

Jason doesn’t question it. There’s Jason, and then there’s Roy-and-Jason, and the pause that goes between Roy-and-Jason and _just_ Jason is so brief that he doesn’t have time to grieve over it. It makes him feel guilty, selfish.

(The thought of losing Roy forever sits in the back of his mind, a heavy reminder. He pushes it away.)

 

 

 

* * * 

 

There _is_ one life, in between the mess of the others, where Jason dies and when he comes back everything is still the same. (Nearly the same. There’s a boy named Tim who runs around in a new Robin costume, but— he forgives that later, once he’s done being angry.)

But Jason remembers a heroin addiction and wonders if he’s too late, that if he decides to ask after Roy he will have already missed him and, really, what would’ve been the point to be brought back if Roy wasn’t here?

Jason does end up finding him in a prison of all places, and he finds an alien girl along the way to help him out. They form a team afterwards and they’re _good_ together, even when Jason sometimes intentionally picks on Roy. They balance each other out, and it helps that Kori is fucking _badass_.

Good things don’t last. Kori has business to attend to somewhere else, and Roy and Jason team up with each other on their own for a while but eventually that falls apart too. They split up and Jason doesn’t hear from Roy again.

(Jason doesn’t count, doesn’t keep track. Roy dies first in every life.)

 

 

* * * 

 

“This was never going to work out. Us.” Jason hesitates, puts his hand on Roy’s shoulder even though Roy won’t even look at him. “You have too much faith in people. I don’t have any.” It’s not enough. Jason risks it, just for a few seconds, so he can lean closer. He feels his lips brush against Roy’s ear and ignores the shiver that runs down his spine.

“I’m sorry I’m never going to be the hero you want me to be.”

And there, just for a few moments, Roy’s eyes flash up. The hurt is plain on Roy’s face (his eyes beg Jason to reconsider) before he turns his head away.

Jason opens his mouth to say something but presses his lips against Roy’s temple instead, a soft, brief reminder.

“Just _leave_ ,” Roy snaps, still refusing to look at him. “Isn’t that what you’re good at, Jay? Disappearing?” And this time Jason does want to say something, _anything_ , just to prove Roy wrong, to make sure he knows that Jason meant every second of this, but—

He backs away. If this is the only peace he can allow Roy, he will give it. And he almost does it, too, allows Roy to have the last word. He’s almost back inside the building when his body stops, twisting a little to take one last look. Roy looks vulnerable, lost, shoulders hiked up next to his ears as though he is already preparing to hear the soft _snick_ of a door closing.

It is entirely selfish. It is absolutely cruel of Jason to do it. But he has to do it, has to knock Roy down another peg or two so that he can finally let Jason go.

“I have every confidence in you— that you’ll stay the hero I know you are.”

Roy will hate him for a while. Jason knows this because he knows he’ll hate himself for a while too. But they’ll get over it, the both of them. Because this is what they had— a stable understanding— but each time, it always comes back to this— the softness of Roy’s mouth, the crinkle next to his eye. Jason decides to leave early because it’s less heartache that way, and if it makes him selfish, so be it.

Jason knows that this is one ending, the easiest way to go. He doesn’t know where it’s going to lead after this, because it always seems to be a blur when Roy isn’t there. (There’s sharp points, of course, like his mom and Bruce and the pseudo-siblings he’s made along the way and his teammates and the Joker, always the fucking Joker— but it always come back to this.)

In the case of Jason Todd, he was never supposed to die.

(This does not change the ending.)

(Letting go of Roy feels like a slow, private death of its own.)

 

* * * 

 

(In another version of this lifetime, because sometimes Jason skips back and lives the alternative, he doesn't leave. It's Roy and him, kicking ass and taking names and, occasionally, being absolutely, sickeningly in love.

It doesn't matter. Roy dies five months later. Receiving a bullet to the head does that sometimes.)

 

 

* * * 

 

It happens so often that sometimes Jason doesn’t even realize it. Roy can slip away from him in the most dramatic of ways, but other times it will be a whisper, a breath of a moment, and the next thing Jason knows the hand he thought he was holding is gone and there’s nothing left to grasp. It’s always the slow deaths that get Jason the most, from battling heroin to battling depression so bad he doesn’t eat unless Jason is sitting right there next to him, urging him to eat _just one more bite, c’mon, please_.

The thing is, Jason never knows what to expect. One time Roy gets cancer and Jason doesn’t even hear it, pushing through it with no issue, and the next it’s during their first meeting and Roy gets stabbed, an innocent civilian in the middle of a fight. The thing is that Jason doesn’t know how much time he gets and he doesn’t know how it’s going to end, but he bears both of them with a (shaky) grin and a give-em-hell attitude.

These are the constants:

Roy can’t sit still to save his life. He gets anxious easily and he’s constantly moving his hands, busy putting something together or creating a rhythm with his fingers on tabletops. There’s a little girl out there named Lian and she’s always the light of Roy’s life, but sometimes he only sees her a couple times a year and other times he barely sees her at all, but the best are when they’re together, because another constant is that Lian loves Jason, too. Roy has a fascination with arrows, even when they aren’t vigilantes.

Even when Jason is being a dumbass, Roy forgives him. He doesn’t get mad when Jason goes unresponsive, and he never pushes him to talk, either. If Jason is in the wrong kind of mood, Roy _knows_ , and he’ll hold open his arms and Jason will crawl into them like he’s a little kid, because sometimes he still feels like it, lost in a world too big for him.

(There is this: Roy’s breath against his neck, fingers tugging at his hair, the safety and warmth of being enveloped by someone’s arms, bruises on his hips, lines from blunt nails dragging down his back. And all Jason knows is this: _I love him I love him I love him_.

Somewhere in between, he’s forgotten if it’s before or after. He wonders when he stopped caring.)

Roy is always brightly and beautifully _Roy_ until the very end. He’ll crack jokes and promise that everything will be okay, even when his heartbeat is slowing down and it’s getting harder for him to breathe. Roy asks him to stay with him until the end, but the idea of leaving is so absurd that Jason couldn’t even begin to comprehend the thought of going.

Jason apologizes every time. It’s not even that it’s his fault, necessarily, or that Jason’s expended all of his resources, because sometimes Roy will tell him to let a dying man die and Jason can’t deny him anything. Jason apologizes for this life and the ones before and the ones that’ll come after, because he doesn’t talk about it and he should be used to it but he never really is.

(Sometimes he worries that he could say sorry for the rest of his life, apologies spilling out of his mouth the same way blood pours from a wound, and it would never be enough, could never erase what he said, the things he’s done to push Roy away, but—)

This is the constant: Roy loves Jason, and Jason loves him. It’s undisputable, something Jason just _knows_ , like he knows that grass is green and flowers bloom in the spring.

Here’s the joke that is never funny: Jason never sees Roy live past the age of 35.

 

 

* * *

  

In the end, Roy asks him to stay. (Jason always forgets that part.)

“It’ll be okay,” Roy tells him, except there’s no way it can be because he’s coughing up blood this time and his voice is a harsh whisper. “You’ll be fine, Jay.”

Jason clings to Roy’s shoulders, buries his head against his neck so he doesn’t have to see the light die from Roy’s eyes because that’s what haunts him the most. He flinches a little when a hand touches his hair and has to press his lips together because they may know every inch of each other’s skin but sometimes the most intimate moments they have are moments like these.

“Roy,” he says, because he feels like he needs to say something, ask something, keep the moment. He’s supposed to stay strong, supposed to stay unaffected, but Roy is looking at him with such unbridled affection that his throat closes up and he fucking _hates_ when Roy tries to pull this kind of bullshit at times like this.

The look Roy gives him is soft and does nothing to ease Jason’s fears. (He hates that he can do this over and over again and Roy still finds one small thing to get him choked up about.) “Jaybird, you’re going to make it out of this just fine.”

Jason looks up at him, questioning, and Roy coughs again before wiping the blood away from his mouth. “You’re going to wake up tomorrow and be alright, just like you always are.”

He can’t help the laugh that spills out, because _of course_. He should’ve fucking realize it sooner. _Of course_ Roy would have done this, would’ve found a way to make sure this happened intentionally. “Fuck you, Harper.”

“Someone had to keep you safe,” Roy tells him, fingers tightening in Jason’s hair briefly before his grip goes slack. “I’d have done a lot worse to keep it this way. It’s not a bad compromise.”

And every tiny little detail flashes through Jason’s head, the small things he should’ve noticed and the big ones that were so fucking obvious. He laughs at himself for being so fucking stupid, but he kind of deserves it for paying attention but not really seeing anything. Roy Harper is a self-sacrificing asshole, and Jason hates him _so fucking much_ , except he doesn’t, not really (not at all).

“You bitch.” Jason places his hands on both sides of Roy’s face, making sure Roy can’t turn away from him. “Don’t do this again.”

Roy’s smile is radiant, even when it’s a little wobbly. “I’ll see you on the flipside.”

Jason stays with him until the very end, and then some.

 

 

* * * 

 

In the case of Jason Todd, he was never supposed to die.

(Roy takes the hit, every goddamn time.)

**Author's Note:**

> come hit me [up](http://stqrfire.tumblr.com/)


End file.
